


Where the Heart Rests

by lotuskasumi



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Promises, Reunions, Star-crossed, Tumblr Ask Box Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 23:24:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4980715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lotuskasumi/pseuds/lotuskasumi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A familiar face is waiting for Shinjiro on the other side.</p>
<p>(From a Tumblr prompt including "Weight of the world" and "shackles.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Heart Rests

“It’s lucky you kept the watch where you did, young man,” the doctor said. “That’s what saved you, if you want to know the truth of it.”

Shinjiro laughed. Oh how he laughed. It hid the tears quite well. “You don’t get it, doc. The watch didn’t do it. She did.”

But of course the doctor didn’t get it, and Shinjiro didn’t have the energy to explain. He did, however, have the energy to listen to the bad news the doctor added on after this small bit of good.

“We’ll be discharging you shortly, but only so you can go back home to get your personal affairs in order. The stay will be brief, and a nurse will come by every day to check on you. … Do you understand what I mean?”

“You’re giving me a chance to die somewhere familiar. Right?”

“Bluntly stated, but still accurate. You can choose to stay here if you wish, but most people in your condition choose to be with their loved ones, right to the very end.”

Shinjiro normally would have balked against that, but he lapsed into a thoughtful silence, and soon was nodding along with everything to doctor said. He had to learn by her example, didn’t he? Had to live by it too, even if he had so little of his own life left.

So home he went, back to the dorm and remained of his friends, though he didn’t quite see the point. The dorm would be closing down at the end of the month, and after that he’d be back on the streets again—if he were still alive.

Akihiko kept promising he wouldn’t let that happen. He swore up and down that he and Mitsuru would find a place for Shinji to stay, even if they had to buy the whole damn building and slap the Kirijo logo on top to justify the purchase. Shinjiro didn’t say a word against these promises, not because he believed them, but because he respected them too much to throw their good grace back in their face.

Let them promise. Let them care. By the end of the month it wouldn’t matter, and they’d have other expenses to worry about, anyway.

* * *

Day after day, it was a little harder to wake up each time Shinjiro fell asleep. And whenever he did manage to sleep, in the awful, bleak hours between three AM and dawn, he fell head first into a dream that had already started without him, as if he were late to his own deluded fantasy.

_Figures._ There’s not much he can get right, is there? He took bullets for Ken and didn’t have the decency to die. He survived all those months in a coma, only to come out of it at the very end, on the day she—

_Go on, say it. The day she died._

Shinjiro could think the words just fine. He could even say them out loud, but it was usually to himself, because no one else felt like bringing it up. It was the monster in the room no one wanted to look at, much less talk about, as if silence could make it hurt any less.

They all should have known better. Aki especially. But Shinjiro wasn’t about to step in and tell them what mistakes not to make. He tried to at first, but the words came out clumsy and cruel, more bitter than he wanted them to be, and they all looked at him with pity and tears in their eyes, and Shinjiro knew they didn’t quite understand. They thought they did, and that was the worst of it.

Eventually Shinjiro shut his mouth about the whole thing. It was the smarter choice, and the nicer one, all things considered. Grief wasn’t a thing two people could share the same way. It had the same name, and the same word was given to the same ache, but the ache was always different, unique. It left you alone, even in a crowd with matching mournful faces. Or in his case, a dorm.

* * *

 

Mournful faces... Whenever he saw Minako in his dreams, Shinjiro half expected her to look as tormented as he dreaded she'd be, but instead she wore that small knowing smile he learned to love, even if at first it set his teeth on edge. It set his teeth on edge now, in dreams, and it makes his hands bend into fists and his heart scream.

_How could you possibly be happy when you’re stuck to that shit?_ He wanted to ask her this, he wanted to ask her so many other things, and tell her twice as much himself, but the words stayed stuck to his throat like so many knives scraping their way down further into his lungs. He couldn't escape it, even in dreams. That same pain made every breath a chore when he was awake, and made every second seem like his last, ‘til he was coughing up more blood than could even keep in.

Borrowed time. Shinjiro was living on borrowed time. He knew that, just like he knew _she_ knew the same about herself in the last days of her life. He knew it was if he'd lived it, even though he hadn't been there through her last moments.

Shinjiro had the weirdest dreams lying in that hospital bed, dreams he knew couldn't be anything but true, but damned if he knew how to explain it. He dreamed about a red eye in the moon, about Minako fading into the sky, pulled up into the neverending night that waited above, dreamed of an awful web of gold and claws that waited to knock her down, again and again, dreamed that Minako stood up, again and again, defiant, determined, and so stubborn. He felt her every ache as if it were happening to himself.

Shinjiro knew that Minako wasn’t trying to die. She was trying to give them all a chance to live. And that’s all Shinjiro had now, in the few days he had left. He knew that chance was the only reason he was still alive and standing. Chance. Luck. Circumstance. Call it what you will, it was all the same thing in the end. Borrowed time--borrowed like the watch she’d found for him, the watch he kept close to his heart both before the shooting and now, in the end, as if some part of her love could seep through the metal and into his skin, down past blood and bone, to the heart of hearts.

That’s where he would keep her safe, if he could. But that sappy shit wouldn’t change a damn thing. She was dead. Dead and gone for good, for a greater good than most people could ever understand. And where else could you keep the dead but in your heart?

Shinjiro knew the answer. _Company. You could keep them company._

* * *

 

The moon was full on the last night of Shinjiro's life, its light glaring through his window like the blind eye of a god. Shinjiro wanted to shove his hand through the glass and take apart every shard until blood, not light, that the window showed, but he barely had the energy to turn his back to the pale bone light, much less make good on his promise to destroy.

His shoulders shook as he fought off another round of hacking, shuddering coughs. It hurt to cough, it hurt to try to get it to stop. Everything hurt, but that wasn't new. It wasn't even interesting. And it would all be over soon.

Shinjiro laughed, but the cough sneaked up on him, until he had to clamp both hands over his mouth. There was blood on his palms when he pulled them back, wet and dark black like splattered ink. He wanted to feel bad about it, but each time he tried his mind focused only on the color—red, so red, bright and brilliant and alive—and then all he could think about is Minako.

Is this how it is in death? You get too lost in his own mental fog to end up where you intended? That's not how he felt in October, taking those bullets for Ken. His mind had been clear and sharp back then. So what was different now, here?

Shinjiro closed his eyes and got his answer. The dream was there again, almost like it was waiting for him. Minako was there too, and he could tell himself it was because she was waiting for him, but he knew that wasn't true, even if this was a dream. It wasn’t like she could be anywhere else, not anymore. The bramble and chains and wires and cords, shackles, all, tying her up and keeping her aloft, held her in place. She wasn’t going anywhere, not ever. And now neither would he.

“Kept you waiting, didn’t I?” Shinjiro thought again and again what he’d finally say to her when they got to meet again, face to face. He settled on a joke, however lame it was, and a smile, or his best attempt at one.

Minako’s eyes weren’t open, and he doubted they ever would again, but Shinjiro would look at her and talk to her and smile at her as if she could see his every expression, as if she could read him as cleverly and quickly as she did back then.

“ _I love you like breathing, Shinji.”_

“ _... the hell’s that supposed to mean?”_

“ _I mean it comes naturally,”_ she had said, smiling, and he had shaken his head and rolled his eyes and then gone blood bright red when she leaned in to kiss him.

That was months ago—six months, exactly. Wasn't it about time he returned the favor?

Shinjiro reached out, held Minako’s face between his hands, and darted up on his toes. Usually she had to do that to him, to accommodate the difference in their heights, or else she would pull him down to her. He didn’t mind being the one to do it this time.

Minako’s forehead was cold beneath Shinjiro's lips, like stone left out in the snow. “Sorry it took me so long to get here,” he said, his lips grazing her skin with every word whispered. “But... I made it. I’m here. I’m home.”

Minako’s eyes fluttered, but they did not open. Shinjiro watched in wonder as her face moved into the smallest smile, the same smile he loved.

Shinjiro closed his eyes, leaned forward so that his forehead was pressed to hers, and let out a long, slow breath both in the dream and in his bed. Of course it was his last.

“Took you long enough,” he heard Minako say. When Shinjiro opened his eyes in the vision that wasn’t quite a dream, but the place where the heart of hearts rests when there’s no more life left to live, it was to see her eyes peering back at him, to see her smile stretching wide into a full grin.

“Way to keep me hanging,” she said, giggling.

“That’s awful,” Shinjiro said, pretending to wince, but he was smiling, and soon he was laughing, and soon his lips were on hers again, after months of wanting and waiting and dreaming.

But that didn’t matter anymore. That was the, before. The past. They were here, now, together, here and now, and they had all of Time left.

> _Ohh... You're always protecting yourself_   
>  _Ohh... Come here with me_
> 
> _Oh believe in me Oh believe in me_   
>  _Do you ever feel this quietness inside?_   
>  _That is where you'll find me_   
>  _Nothing can erase me_

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics at the end taken from Olivia Lufkin's "If you only knew," which I think is a very fitting Shinjiro x Minako/Fool Moon song.


End file.
